Future Kick (1991) User Reviews (10)

"Sit back, relax, and let us control your mind"

[The_Phantom_Projectionist · 3/10 · 10 May 2015]

This is a remarkably bad movie, even by Don Wilson's meager standards. I'm sure there are folks in the world who enjoy low-budget, sci-fi B-movies and for whom FUTURE KICK fulfills some personal niche, but for me, this is just lousy, unimaginative filmmaking, the only good thing about which is that it sets a low standard to which all future Don Wilson sci-fi outings thankfully rise above.

The story: In a dystopian future where corporations control the world, a wealthy female moon-dweller (Meg Foster) arrives on earth to track down her husband's murderer - a task for which she enlists the aid of the last member of a race of lethal androids (Wilson).

Give cult producer Roger Corman credit for being game enough to give every weirdo script that fell into his lap a chance; a filmmaker would *have* to be pretty indiscriminant to try and make something of this. Mind you, this isn't to say that the script co-written by Catherine Cyran couldn't have been made into a decent film, but rather that the movie makers were foolish to attempt it on what must have been a small budget. With a plot that clearly outweighs this one's financial resources, the results include embarrassing computer effects, cheapo sets that hardly convey it's a futuristic setting, and a perpetually dark lighting scheme. This last aspect is the worst for me: absolutely every scene is filmed in shadow, making the movie an entirely depressing experience.

The film features five fight scenes; three of them are crud and the other two (including a showdown between Wilson and his late friend Chris Penn) are only marginally better - all thanks to that awful lighting scheme. Beyond that, there's only a car chase to see, and a bucketload of gore. This one's clearly the bloodiest flick Wilson ever starred in, but even that isn't worth seeing the film for by itself. Characters are lucky if they're two-dimensional, seeing as some (e.g. Don Wilson himself) are completely lacking in character at all. Bad guy Eb Lottimer goes through the whole movie stabbing people and ripping their hearts out, but at the end he's still the most boring serial killer you'll ever see.

What else can I say? I have nothing substantially good to write about this one. Admittedly, I've never been a fan of Don Wilson's movies, but this is the absolute low for him. I don't often blame a single movie for ensuring a director's success or lack of, but man, am I not surprised that Damian Klaus hasn't made another picture since this one.

mehh

[andy-mccarthy · 4/10 · 7 March 2006]

If you like Don Wilson it is for you. Fight scenes were OK and he does manage to get some charisma across ! Chris Penn was underused.

I was more disappointed with the film's overuse of stock footage from other low budget films. We had Nell from "Battle Beyond the Stars" as the virtual reality computer - also space cowboys ship was an escape pod falling to earth(akia) A car chase from "Crime Zone" was pasted in - looked plain stupid given the fact that the cars looked totally different and the chase itself (round and round a warehouse)made no sense as it was brutally edited to ensure the "Crime Zone" characters didn't get a look in. The mad part is when the "crime zone" car chase ends.. the 2 cars involved (one is supposed to be Don's) come to a halt - then we cut back to FutureKick and Dons car is shown still moving, then braking in a location that looks nothing like the one in "Crime Zone".

Another for Mystery Science Theatre !!!

Cheap Cyborg knockoff

[DigitalRevenantX7 · 3/10 · 5 May 2016]

In the mid-21st Century, Earth has become a hell-hole teeming with poverty & crime. The rich have fled to the Moon where they established a safe haven. Howard Morgan, a virtual reality game designer, returns to Earth to sell his latest creation. But while enjoying a night out on the town he is brutally murdered. His widow Nancy decides to follow his trail. With the help of Walker, the last of the Cyberons, a race of law enforcement androids built by a corrupt corporation to enforce their laws only to turn on them, now working as a bounty hunter, Nancy discovers that her husband was killed because he had obtained information implicating his employer in an illegal organ theft ring that steals organs from murder victims. As the pair attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the organ theft ring's psychotic assassin & his android sidekick attempt to silence them.

Ever since he came to fame in the Bloodfist films, champion kickboxer turned actor Don "The Dragon" Wilson has become a cult star on the B-film action circuit. His quick fists & brutal fighting style has won him a number of fans. Roger Corman, who produced the Bloodfist films, decided to give him a chance to join the sci-fi genre with Future Kick, which was to be Wilson's third film overall & his first genre picture.

Future Kick is, when you come down to it, a cheap copy of the Van Damme cult flick CYBORG. Both films have similar plots – a martial arts warrior must protect a woman from maniacal killers. But where Cyborg had Van Damme playing a human warrior fighting to save a cyborg woman from a gang of pirates, Future Kick has Wilson playing an android bounty hunter protecting a human woman from her husband's killer. The milieu employed in each film is different – Cyborg had a post-apocalyptic world teeming with death & destruction, while Future Kick had a slightly more stable world filled with crime & overworked police. Also of note is the fact that the action scenes in Cyborg were legendary amongst martial arts fans for their relentlessness but the ones in Future Kick are cramped by the film's low budget & needed a lot more room to work in (despite this Wilson manages to show off some of his impressive fighting skills).

If the action doesn't get you on, then the film's dark humour will. Director Damian Klaus inserts a sardonic sense of humour in the film – Eb Lottimer kills his victims by cutting their hearts out with an implement that looks like a sinister version of those plastic tripods that pizza shops put in their pizza boxes to stop the box from sagging during transportation. Or the medical corporation that advertises everything from organ transplants to genital enhancements. Or the high-tech blood sport called "Laser Blade" where two fighters must control an energy ball that can destroy the opponent's head on contact. Or the police station, which is so overworked that it takes victims of crime a multiple-day wait to report a murder. The film is quite gory but the gore is handled in a decidedly daft manner that makes it funny.

Despite the cheap thrills, Future Kick is mostly a disappointment. Wilson's character is supposed to be an android but sleeps, eats & feels pain despite being a robot bounty hunter. Meg Foster tries to play the widow with sincerity, but her inherently creepy demeanor undoes her performance. Eb Lottimer & Christopher Penn have fun in their roles at the show's villains while Wilson himself – still a mediocre actor by this stage – has to contend with a poorly written script & his own pitbull-like personality. The film has plenty of stock footage from other films in order to disguise its cheapness. But the worst part is the ending, which reveals everything to be a virtual reality manifestation that really sinks the film.

Futuristic Rubbish

[Vomitron_G · 2/10 · 20 July 2011]

I can't imagine Don 'The Dragon' Wilson ever having played in one single decent film. Once again he's starring in a whole heap of inconsistent rubbish with so many ridiculous elements thrown into the plot, that the movie just becomes insane. Main man Don plays a Cyberon - part human, part machine - and he's the last of his kind. Apparently the government wants him eliminated, but that is of no importance to the plot. Because this movie is about Meg Foster - who's very much sleepwalking her way through this flick - who lives on the moon but comes to the earth because her husband scientists got killed there. But there's also an evil corporation which illegally traffics human body parts, so that's also what this movie is about. But actually, the main villain is a serial killer running around ripping people's hearts out, so this film is about him. Also, this film is simply about a series of titty bars, because futuristic cities are a cesspool of depravity, as to be expected. And then we have a (cyber-)game called 'Laserblade', which is also of importance to the plot. Are you still following? Doesn't matter, because it's all a giant bunch of nonsense without any logic to it. And what on earth was Chris Penn doing in this stinker? He's playing a cyborg who gets to kick-box against Don near the end. Some more redeeming qualities this movie has: a decapitation, two head explosions, a full body explosion, a cut-off finger and a lot of naked tits. Since this is a Roger Corman production, Corman took the liberty of splicing in footage from a lot of other movies produced by him; mainly special outer-space effects footage (from "Galaxy Of Terror" & "Forbidden World") and naked tits (from "Stripped To Kill II: Live Girls"). How cheap can you get, Roger? The conclusion of the film is downright stupid, but it does explain why nothing in it for 70 minutes long makes any sense at all. Seeing is believing. And I saw it. Otherwise I could not have imagined how an unbelievable heap of rubbish "Future Kick" is. Now you go watch it. You know you want to.

Kick to the face...

[fmarkland32 · 2/10 · 17 March 2008]

Don "The Dragon" Wilson stars as Walker a nominal cyborg (A cyborg that can get drunk.) who helps Meg Foster find out who killed her husband while battling Chris Penn in the process and dodging bad guys in the hell that is earth in the 21st century. Future Kick is easily the weakest of my robot movie binge and the reason is because it's been so badly put together that any idea of science fiction is lost in the kickboxing chaos. If said action sequences were good, things would be interesting but alas, Damian Klaus fuses these sequences with the excitement of golf and hence the film just slogs through its predictable plot points with uninspired dreariness. The film also seems to be patched with stock footage, and the film's special effects are lame. Aside from a few scenes of heart rippings and decapitations the film just has nothing in its favor. The movie also features a stupid ending, a really confusing explanation as to who Don Wilson's character is and worst of all is the sheer uninspired way it all plays out. Science Fiction can often be exciting and enjoyable when low budget filmmakers really try hard to take advantage of ideas but when they rip off better movies and lack the decency to flow without energy you get movies like Future Kick. A movie devoid of brains, excitement and watch-ability. Future Kick is really quite an awful movie.

* out of 4-(Bad)

The 69-minute running time is one of the best things about Future Kick.

[tarbosh22000 · 4/10 · 17 September 2021]

A lot is going on in New Los Angeles in 2025. These things called Cyberons were invented, for one thing. They're androids with both human and robot characteristics. For whatever reason, the companies that created them sought out to destroy them all, but there's one left, a kickboxing Cyberon named Walker (Don). Because it's the future, you see, VR is huge so a VR developer named Howard (Pomerantz) leaves his home on the moon to travel to earth to sell his wares. While there, he runs afoul of a baddie named Hynes (Lottimer). Apparently Hynes works for a place that sells black market organs. He has a special tool that plucks the organs out of living victims. Hynes then answers to his boss Kraner (Ruscio).

After not hearing from her husband for a while, Howard's wife Nancy (Foster) follows him to earth. She consults with a tarot card reader named Tye (Dona), but after witnessing Hynes doing his evil business, she is forced to go on the run. She then teams up with Walker, as they are the two most harassed people in New Los Angeles. Also Hynes is looking for "the disc". Then Walker has a Final Factory Fight with Bang (Penn).

Oh, and the latest, hottest game in New L. A. is something called Laserblade, the rules of which are so unclear and incomprehensible (remember those words) that it seems like it was developed by Mitchell and Webb after they finished with Numberwang. Of course, the loser of Laserblade dies horribly from some sort of flash of light. Does any of what you just read have any kind of flow, continuity or coherence? Does it just seem like a bunch of random ingredients thrown together? Apparently the filmmakers didn't notice or care, but that's FUTURE KICK for ya!

For a film with so many elements, there's a lot missing from Future Kick. Namely, relatable, sympathetic, or interesting characters or situations the audience can care about. There's no human element. It's just a jumble. In many cases, movies with a tangled web of ideas without a lot of coherence can be a lot of fun and enjoyable to watch. But there's something almost depressing about Future Kick. Maybe it's the lack of lighting or the fact that most scenes look like they were shot in studio-created alleyways.

We realize they did that to cover up for the lack of budget, but the problem with that is that it's a dead giveaway for a...lack of budget. As viewers, we don't care about what the budget is. Just give us something we can sink our teeth into. But the whole dark alleyway thing becomes bleak very quickly and it all feels quite dingy.

We realize this was Corman's version of Blade Runner (1982) crossed with The Terminator (1984). But really it's the same old formula he used for Dragon Fire (1993), Bloodfist 2050 (2005) and others. Just throw in some "futuristic" sets (just turn off the lights in any room in your house and it's about as futuristic as Future Kick), then garnish with a few strippers and there you have it.

Fan favorite Don "The Dragon" Wilson is perfectly cast as a robot, however. It gives his - as we call them - 'wonderfully wooden' line readings a reason to exist. While we were more than happy to see a kickboxing fight between The Dragon and Chris Penn, it really came out of nowhere. Forget character development, there's no fight development! But where else will you see a fight like that? Only in Future Kick, we suppose.

For the Laserblade matches - which are sort of like mental arm wrestling matches where the loser is killed by a deadly camera flash - the audience is clutching some futuristic form of cash and is yelling. It's not exactly Punchfighting, but it's close. Sort of. Laserblade would be a cool name for a movie in its own right, but apparently it was decided the idea wasn't strong enough to support a full movie on its own. We won't tell David Cronenberg that it's Scanners (1981) meets the arm wrestling scene from The Fly (1986).

Future Kick was the one and only directorial or writing credit for a mysterious man named Damian Klaus. If that is his real name. Clearly he felt he said everything he needed to say and that he completed his mission as a filmmaker. I know I would if I had created Laserblade.

But it must be said that one of the reasons that Future Kick feels like it's missing something is the fact that the running time is just over 69 minutes before the end credits. Maybe the secret keys that tie everything together are on the cutting room floor. But why would that be? Maybe one day there will be a "Director's Cut" of Future Kick that restores everything. Except our sanity and the minutes back into our lives.

But, as it stands, the 69-minute running time is one of the best things about Future Kick. There's nothing for viewers to latch on to, but you don't have to suffer very long. Future Kick remains one of the lesser Don The Dragon movies.

too violent

[daveart · 3/10 · 1 February 1999]

decent sets and good choreography of kick boxing scenes. but movie is absolutely ruined by graphic violent murders

Ugly and hard to watch.

[tylerrosin · 1/10 · 18 July 2021]

This is a awful movie. Very ugly to look at and made zero sense. Action was dull and everyone looked bored. Truly terrible. Pass on this one.

If Total Recall and Terminator had a baby it would be Future Kick!

[bclivesinme · 7/10 · 11 June 2020]

Cyborgs, space ships, VR and strippers oh my! Not only does it have actions but it has BOOBS! I mean a LOT of boob action. I would rename this film to "Future Boobs". This is a entertaining 90's B action film that should not be taken serious but rather with glass of wine or many shots. I would say this film would be a great drinking night movie because it has so many scenes where they completely rip off scenes from Total Recall and Terminator.

I give this 7 future kicks to the face out of 10.

Big Trouble in New Los Angeles!

[cn8cs · 10/10 · 27 June 2002]

If you like John Carpenter films - especially the great ones like "They Live" - then you'll love FUTURE KICK! First of all, the story is fresh and haunting as its set in a world where (SPOILERS ALERT!) the rich live on the moon and the drug and sex-crazed criminals run rampant on the Earth. The other thing is - and this is really almost true today - is that corporations have become the true evil in our society. They have their own police force and death squads. If you think about it, we're not that far off from that becoming true.

The lead actor is a famous kick-boxer named "The Dragon". I didn't know who he was before I started watching the film but now I really want to see more of his work. The fight scenes are very good considering the lack of computer effects in those days (think THE MATRIX without the slow-motion stuff).

The characters and performances were all good too and you really felt bad for these people as they (SPOILERS) lost their organs for corporate crime. Chris Penn (Resivior Dogs, True Romance) was also very good, and might have showed some of his best work as the Cyberon aptly named Bang.

The gory effects were a bit gory, but I think it was necessary for the story. Its much better than "Dune" but not as good as "Total Recall" and worth buying if they ever make a DVD.